Last year on this most romantic (or most un-romantic, depending on who you are) of days, I featured furniture for the broken-hearted. This Valentine’s day, I’m feeling a little more upbeat and a little more optimistic, perhaps due to the little one on the way, so I shall present you with a quintet of quirky gifts for the home from Kikkerland.

While it’s certainly no gaudy heart-shaped box of inferior chocolates, a tin of heart-shaped paperclips is a lot less fattening. Ditto for the heart hot water bottle cozy, which will at the very least keep some part of your anatomy warm. The cupid’s arrow scroll holder will either get you a kiss or a restraining order, depending on your message. You might also say it with heart-shaped magnets or perhaps even combs, though I’m not sure what exactly you’d be saying… Get organized! Brush your hair! I love you!

Romantic? Not quite. But if you’re dating someone and you’re still in “I like you a lot and don’t want to scare you off” territory, you could do worse.

Like I said over at Manolo for the Brides, whatever your preferred end of December holiday, I hope it’s a happy one! Me, I do Christmas, and while I copped to a Christmas tree for The Beard’s sake, I would much rather have set up a Shelf Tree, like this one by Frank Visser of IJM.

Holidays are by their very nature a little tacky, and Christmas is the tackiest holiday of them all. Bright reds and deep greens typically look awful together, but we tolerate the combination around Christmastime because those are the colors of the holiday. Suddenly traditional plaid fabrics are de rigueur and metallics are out in force. Snowman figurines become legitimate decor. Blow up statuary appears on lawns all over town. Blissfully, it all gets socked away for another year once the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drops.

Before we can all once again hide our secret holiday shame, an act which brings with it its own wonderfully guilty pleasure, the people at Tacky Christmas Yards collect pictures of the most garish outdoor holiday decor displays they and their followers can find. The entries for this year’s list are still coming in, but there are plenty of tacky yards from 2007 that may amuse.

The holiday season is once again upon us, which means it’s time for holiday decorating. If you’re like my father, you have already hung your outside lights, decorated your Christmas tree or put your menorah on display, and erected the largest Christmas village this side of Hallmark. If you’re like me, your holiday decorations are on a UPS truck somewhere and might arrive in the next two weeks. Whatever your holiday decorating style, you may enjoy gazing at or even craftily copying the reinvented wreaths featured in a recent LA Times slideshow.

Last year, I gave relatives homemade wine cork wreaths as holiday gifts. Many hours and two severe burns later, I decided that I’d buy holiday gifts this year. That said, if I did decide I wanted a holiday wreath, I’d probably still make my own, and I could do worse than to use the above wreaths as my inspiration. Forget boring evergreen branches — wreaths can be made of anything from leafy greens to feathers to driftwood.

I’m proud to say that I actually have quite a bit of my holiday shopping done, though this is by no means usual. This year, I copped out and went with gifts for the home. I guess it’s fun trying to buy gifts for my elders who already have everything they need, but I just plain don’t have the time this year to dedicate my time and energy to shopping.

What do all the parents and grandparents in my life have? Homes, that’s what. And I’ve never heard anyone complain that they simply have too much cute in the kitchen.

What you see:

• Picasso napkin rings, $9.95 for four
• Melamine appetizer plates, $19.99 for twelve
• Sunburst wall clock, $39.95
• Polka dot cake stand, $35
• Retro spice rack, $24.99
• Aqua coffee press, $32.99

Arg! Halloween is almost here and work has kept you far too busy to dig the giant hanging spider out from the basement! What to do, what to do? You could do what Sylvar did and transform cheap Ikea accessories into re-usable holiday decor.

How did he do it? It took:

• One 8 ml tube of cadmium orange Cotman water colour ($6 regularly, $4.50 on sale)
• One 17 ¾” REGOLIT paper lampshade ($5)
• One HEMMA lamp cord ($4)

It also took about one and a half hours. Sylvar is calling it a harvest moon, which I think is an apt description. You could also tape black paper eyes, a nose, and a toothy grin onto the REGOLIT to make a jack-o-lantern that magically becomes a lamp when Halloween has come and gone.

Um, no thanks. I think I’ll stand way back from this creepy hanging noose lamp designed by Marie Thurnauer. While Halloween is just a few short weeks away, this morbid piece of decor is meant to hang in one’s lair 365 days a year.

That’s not the only reason I’ll be standing back, however. At 4750.00 €, this lamp is downright scary.

(via)

As if those sappy, hotel room wall worthy Thomas Kinkade paintings weren’t enough, we can no see first hand what happens when a giant ice man comes and devours an entire Kinkade village.

Oh, the horror! The horror!

In the grand tradition of big box stores that start pumping out Christmas music just after Halloween, I thought I’d think about my least favorite season early this year so it didn’t sneak up on me unawares. It’s not difficult when stores like Domestications are starting to preview their holiday wares. Growing up, we always had live fir trees ready for post-Christmas planting adorned with real candles, but in recent years I haven’t done much of anything to mark the season.

Naturally all that beautiful real tree, real fire ambiance was lost on school-age me, and I dreamed of having a pretty pink tree like this one.

While grown-up me dreams of having the candles of yesteryear, she doesn’t particularly relish the thought of her house burning down when one of the cats decides to catch one of the flickering orange sprites that have landed all over the tree. And while real trees are wonderful, I always feel a little guilty for killing a tree just to spruce up (rimshot) the house a little. Last year, I almost convinced The Beard that we needed a red tree of all things, but maybe pink really is the way to go.

Would this be vintage 50s cool or so horribly tacky as to be classified a crime against nature? You tell me:

A happiest of holiday to you and yours! If, unlike moi, you have a Christmas tree somewhere in your home, tell us about it. Real or faux? Little or sprawling? Fresh and green or plastic and pink?